Singapore government Aids comment outrages gay activists [REUTERS]

11.03.05

SINGAPORE - Gay activists responded with outrage and disbelief on
Thursday to statements by a Singapore official who said a gay and
lesbian festival -- dubbed Asia's largest gay event -- may have caused
a big spike in Aids cases.

The "Nation.04" party -- a festival of international DJs, podium
dancers, pumping music and muscular boys stripping off their tops on
packed dance floors -- had increased in size every year since it was
launched in 2000.

Last August's party could have allowed "gays from high prevalence
societies to fraternise with local gay men, seeding the infection in
the local community," junior health minister Balaji Sadasivan told
parliament on Wednesday.

Sadasivan said this was the view of an unnamed epidemiologist to
explain a 28 percent rise in the number of new HIV/Aids cases in
Singapore in 2004 to an all-time high of 311.

"This is a hypothesis and more research needs to done," he said.

Gay activists such as Eileena Lee of People Like Us accused the
government of promoting homophobia and being irresponsible.

"This is almost like paranoia," she said. "Statements like this can
marginalise and stigmatise what is already a minority group."

Fridae.com, which organised the event and runs Singapore's main gay
and lesbian Internet site, said the government must shoulder more
responsibility for the rise in HIV because of its poor public health
policies and laws which criminalise oral sex.

Under Singapore's Penal Code section 377A, acts of "gross indecency"
between two men are punishable by up to two years in jail. The
government has said it may decriminalise oral sex but only between men
and women.

"In the past 25 years none of the public health campaigns have ever
targeted the gay community. It's really no wonder that the rates of
infection are increasing," said Stuart Koe, chief executive of Fridae.com.

"It's very simplistic and dangerous of them to point the finger at one
single event and say that that is responsible for the spike," he said.

Ninety percent of newly diagnosed patients were male and a third of
them gay men, said Sadasivan, describing the new cases as "the tip of
the iceberg" in Singapore where a total of about 2,000 people are
diagnosed to be suffering from HIV/Aids.

"For every Aids patient we have diagnosed, there are possibly two to
four undiagnosed patients with HIV in Singapore. That means there
could be, anywhere between 4000 to 8000, undiagnosed HIV patients in
Singapore," he said.

The "Nation.04" party -- half of whose 6000 revellers came from other
Asian countries and the United States to make it Asia's largest known
gay festival -- is at odds with Singapore's image as a strait-laced
city-state.

But the government has turned a blind eye to the growth of an
entertainment industry catering for homosexuals, quietly acknowledging
the potential of the "pink dollar. "

Gay activists have urged authorities to decriminalise homosexuality in
the affluent, predominantly ethnic Chinese island of 4.2 million
people to strengthen Aids awareness. - REUTERS

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10114668
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Related articles:
s'pore health minister's comments on HIV surge and gay parties draw
criticism
http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/article.php?articleid=1405&viewarticle=1

press statement on s'pore minister's remarks linking HIV surge to
nation parties
http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/article.php?articleid=1406&viewarticle=1

s'pore gay group offers other possible reasons for HIV surge among MSM
http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/article.php?articleid=1407&viewarticle=1

Sylvia Tan
E-mail: <sylvia.tan@...>